Nemo 2

     King stepped into the small space. He drew the curtain, cutting the space in two. He stretched his shirt up and off of himself, and rolled his pants down. He lifted his feet out of the rolled denim, and peeled off his last bit of clothing. He hung the underwear and the rest of his clothing from the rail above him where the curtain was attached. Standing naked, he felt the walls hugging him. He felt the quick touches of the ceramic as he turned and adjusted the curtain. Everywhere, everything was closing in.
     King backed away from the water stream. It would always be cold at first. Try as he might, little specks of icy water stung him. The ceramic tile continued to poke him, and the cold wet curtain would wrap its arms around his thigh. Everyone wanted something from him. He waited till steam sprouted from the ground, and he slowly moved under the water. There it was. He closed his eyes and found it immediately. He only found it when he was like this. The curtain had to be closed and the water had to be hot. There had to be quiet.
     He pushed his ears under the streams and the water ran into his ears. It found it’s way to his eardrum, and ran over smoothly. He heard the gentle gurgling and nothing else. As he breathed in, the steam cleared his nose. He took deep breaths, and felt the dirt and grime seep out of him. He couldn’t see it, but he knew that little trails of black soot were running down from his nose. He lifted his face so the water cleared away all the black. He felt around for the knob, and turned up the heat. The hot water felt like a warm coat. He wrapped up his arms, and rubbed his hands against his flesh.
     King had found it. His eyes were closed, but he saw more with them closed than he would ever see with them open. He saw himself standing in the rain in the center of a city square. He had on an overcoat and a black hat. He saw himself holding onto his hat as he walked over to a bench. There was another man on the bench, a bulky man in a lighter colored coat. His face was worn and eroded as if the storm had been whittling away at his face his whole life. King saw himself sitting down next to the man but neither of them spoke. They just looked out on the rain. The wind blew their coats in the same direction. The rain bounced off of their faces, but neither said a word to each other. For a while, they both sat in silence, then the large man turned to King and pointed straight ahead.
     A few hundred meters away stood a woman. She was dressed in soaked white cloth. Her hair was black and strewn across her face. King focused. She opened her mouth and began to sing. Her voice was like water. It ran all through his head and over his eardrums. She was singing for him. She wanted him to hear something. The sound grew and grew. His ears began to pulse with the slow frequency of her voice. The bench and the man and the rain all drew back out of the scene. Soon the woman herself disappeared and King was left with just the noise.
     He opened his eyes and immediately noticed a voice. There was someone near him singing. It was a woman’s voice, and it carried throughout the compartments. She was most likely next to him. King drew back the curtain and walked down the hall to the compartment next to him. He saw water falling onto feet. The woman continued to sing, and King brought up his hand to pull back the curtain. He paused for a moment, then drew back his hand. He wouldn’t do it.

Stopclock

The night before
an hour long death:
I am counting down the minutes
and any second now
it’ll hit me.
I will soak in these moments
till the cloudy waters of idleness
prune my skin.
And my flesh will fall off
as I try to hold on to this instant.

Nemo 1

     You have one look at her, one glance, that is at least non-pessimistic. It’s not optimistic by any means, but at least it isn’t pessimistic. It’s merely a judgment: “That girl is very attractive,” you think. Then your higher brain cuts in. “She is a lesbian.” There isn’t even a ‘probably’ in the sentence. At this point, it has happened too many times for you to even entertain the possibility that she isn’t a lesbian. It only takes a matter of milliseconds to identify a rainbow colored bracelet on her wrist, and that’s the end of it.
     You do pretty well for most of the night. You manage to ignore her, and the few times you can’t ignore her, you don’t suffer all that much. But something towards the end of the show changes that. You notice she is looking at you. Even in the frenzy of the pit, while you are being tossed about, you feel this slight uneasiness. You say to yourself, “she isn’t looking at you, she’s watching the whole event, and you just happen to catch her eyes looking at you a few times. It isn’t anything to worry about.”
     Towards the end of the show, you are thrust from the pit backwards. You accidentally knock someone behind you. You do a half turn and realize it is the girl. You move forward as if to say “sorry for bumping into you” but in your head your are nearly proud. You make a mental notch on your bedpost. This is your “love em and leave em.” This is as exciting as it gets for you. You are celebrating your conquest when you feel a brush up against you. It is not a simple touching of skin, but a nice lateral rub with plenty of surface area. There is elbow and forearm, and maybe even a little breast. You do another half turn and are shocked. It is the girl, and she has just rubbed up against you. There was no one behind her to push her; she was outside of the pit. She did this on her own.
     Now you are dissatisfied. There is ambiguity. You try to recall clues to her sexuality. Was the bracelet really rainbow colored? Or was it just colorful? The other girl she was with, did she show her any signs of affection? Was there any nuzzling? Did the other girl even look like a lesbian? What about the guy she was with? Was he her boyfriend? Was he just a friend? You continue to question, and you begin to doubt your instincts. That night you sleep uncomfortably thinking about this girl. She has done what every girl has done to you. She’s made you frustrated and sad, and she’s made you want to go back for more.

New Stuff

So, after not updating or visiting this blog for a while, I started to debate whether or not I should delete it and move it to another website. I know it looks like I am not doing much, but believe it or not I’d like to expand, and WordPress just does not offer that capability. I haven’t decided what I will do yet, but I do have some new and sort of old stuff for posting. I don’t know who has been reading this, but my dashboard stat things says this has been getting more views these past few days. Given that, I will actually update with some stuff. For those of you who are reading, I welcome your comments and what not.

Calculus

I would write something substantial but calculus has dominated my life. The reason I’m not doing well in calculus is because I sit and write poetry. I wrote this today while my teacher was lamenting the market crash.

and we all thought it was safe
and we all thought we were at the top of our game
and then it all came crashing down
and we searched the ground
and there was no money to be found

potential song lyrics?